the noise and fire of my gun; some of them were even ready to die for
fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror; but when they saw the
creature dead, and sunk in the water, and that I made signs to them to
come to the shore, they took heart and came to the shore, and began to
search for the creature. I found him by his blood staining the water;
and by the help of a rope, which I slung round him, and gave the Negroes
to haul, they dragged him on shore, and found that it was a most curious
leopard, spotted, and fine to an admirable degree; and the Negroes held
up their hands with admiration, to think what it was I had killed
him with.
The other creature, frightened with the flash of fire and the noise of
the gun, swam on shore, and ran up directly to the mountains from
whence they came; nor could I, at that distance, know what it was. I
found quickly the Negroes were for eating the flesh of this creature, so
I was willing to have them take it as a favour from me; which, when I
made signs to them that they might take him, they were very thankful
for. Immediately they fell to work with him; and though they had no
knife, yet, with a sharpened piece of wood, they took off his skin as
readily, and much more readily, than we could have done with a knife.
They offered me some of the flesh, which I declined, making as if I
would give it them, but made signs for the skin, which they gave me very
freely, and brought me a great deal more of their provisions, which,
though I did not understand, yet I accepted. I then made signs to them
for some water, and held out one of my jars to them, turning it bottom
upward, to show that it was empty, and that I wanted to have it filled.
They called immediately to some of their friends, and there came two
women, and brought a great vessel made of earth, and burnt, as I
suppose, in the sun; this they set down to me, as before, and I sent
Xury on shore with my jars, and filled them all three. The women were as
stark naked as the men.
I was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and water; and
leaving my friendly Negroes, I made forward for about eleven days more,
without offering to go near the shore, till I saw the land run out a
great length into the sea, at about the distance of four or five leagues
before me; and the sea being very calm, I kept a large offing, to make
this point. At length, doubling the point, at about two leagues from
the land, I saw plainly land on the other side, to seaward: then I
concluded, as it was most certain indeed, that this was the Cape de
Verd, and those the islands, called, from thence, Cape de Verd Islands.
However, they were at a great distance, and I could not well tell what I
had best to do; for if I should be taken with a gale of wind, I might
neither reach one nor the other.
In this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin, and
sat me down, Xury having the helm; when, on a sudden, the boy cried out,
Master, master, a ship with a sail! and the foolish boy was frightened
out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his master's ships
sent to pursue us, when I knew we were gotten far enough out of their
reach. I jumped out of the cabin, and immediately saw, not only the
ship, but what she was, viz. that it was a Portuguese ship, and, as I
thought, was bound to the coast of Guinea, for Negroes. But, when I
observed the course she steered, I was soon convinced they were bound
some other way, and did not design to come any nearer to the shore: upon
which, I stretched out to sea as much as I could, resolving to speak
with them, if possible.
With all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come in
their way, but that they would be gone by before I could make any signal
to them: but after I had crowded to the utmost, and began to despair,
they, it seems, saw me, by the help of their perspective glasses, and
that it was some European boat, which, they supposed, must belong to
some ship that was lost; so they shortened sail, to let me come up. I
was encouraged with this, and as I had my patron's ensign on board, I
made a waft of it to them, for a signal of distress, and fired a gun,
both which they saw; for they told me they saw the smoke, though they
did not hear the gun. Upon these signals, they very kindly brought to,
and lay by for me; and in about three hours' time I came up with them.
They asked me what I was, in Portuguese, and in Spanish, and in French,
but I understood none of them; but, at last, a Scotch sailor, who was on
board, called to me, and I answered him, and told him I was an
Englishman, that I had made my escape out of slavery from the Moors, at
Sallee: they then bade me come on board, and very kindly took me in, and
all my goods.
It was an inexpressible joy to me, which any one will believe, that I
was thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable, and almost
hopeless, condition as I was in; and I immediately offered all I had to
the captain of the ship, as a return for my deliverance; but he
generously told me, he would take nothing from me, but that all I had
should be delivered safe to me, when I came to the Brazils. "For," says
he, "I have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be
saved myself; and it may, one time or other, be my lot to be taken up in
the same condition. Besides," continued he, "when I carry you to the
Brazils, so great a way from your own country, if I should take from you
what you have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that
life I have given. No, no, Seignior Inglese," (Mr. Englishman,) says he;
"I will carry you thither in charity, and these things will help to buy
your subsistence there, and your passage home again."
As he was charitable, in this proposal, so he was just in the
performance, to a tittle; for he ordered the seamen, that none should
offer to touch any thing I had: then he took every thing into his own
possession, and gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might
have them, even so much as my three earthen jars.
As to my boat, it was a very good one; and that he saw, and told me he
would buy it of me for the ship's use; and asked me what I would have
for it? I told him, he had been so generous to me in every thing, that I
could not offer to make any price of the boat, but left it entirely to
him: upon which, he told me he would give me a note of hand to pay me
eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil; and when it came there, if any
one offered to give more, he would make it up. He offered me also sixty
pieces of eight more for my boy Xury, which I was loth to take; not that
I was not willing to let the captain have him, but I was very loth to
sell the poor boy's liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in
procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to
be just, and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an
obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian: upon
this, and Xury saying he was willing to go to him, I let the
captain have him.
We had a very good voyage to the Brazils, and arrived in the Bay de
Todos los Santos, or All Saints' Bay, in about twenty-two days after.
And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all
conditions of life; and what to do next with myself, I was now
to consider.
The generous treatment the captain gave me, I can never enough remember:
he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for
the leopard's skin, and forty for the lion's skin, which I had in my
boat, and caused every thing I had in the ship to be punctually
delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell, he bought of me; such
as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of
bees-wax,--for I had made candles of the rest: in a word, I made about
two hundred and twenty pieces of eight of all my cargo; and with this
stock, I went on shore in the Brazils.
I had not been long here, before I was recommended to the house of a
good honest man, like himself, who had an ingeino as they call it, (that
is, a plantation and a sugar-house.) I lived with him some time, and
acquainted myself, by that means, with the manner of planting and making
of sugar: and seeing how well the planters lived, and how they got rich
suddenly, I resolved, if I could get a licence to settle there, I would
turn planter among them: endeavouring, in the mean time, to find out
some way to get my money, which I had left in London, remitted to me. To
this purpose, getting a kind of a letter of naturalization, I purchased
as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan
for my plantation and settlement; such a one as might be suitable to the
stock which I proposed to myself to receive from England.
I had a neighbour, a Portuguese of Lisbon, but: born of English parents,
whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call
him my neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine, and we went
on very sociably together. My stock was but low, as well as his; and we
rather planted for food than any thing else, for about two years.
However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so
that Ihe third year we planted some tobacco, and made each of us a large
piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come: but we
both wanted help; and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in
parting with my boy Xury.
But, alas! for me to do wrong, that never did right, was no great
wonder. I had no remedy, but to go on: I had got into an employment
quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the life I delighted
in, and for which I forsook my father's house, and broke through all his
good advice: nay, I was coining into the very middle station, or upper
degree of low life, which my father advised me to before; and which, if
I resolved to go on with, I might as well have staid at home, and never
have fatigued myself in the world, as I had done: and I used often to
say to myself, I could have done this as well in England, among my
friends, as have gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers
and savages, in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear
from any part of the world that had the least knowledge of me.
In this manner, I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret.
I had nobody to converse with, but now and then this neighbour; no work
to be done, but by the labour of my hands: and I used to say, I lived
just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had nobody
there but himself. But how just has it been! and how should all men
reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others
that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be
convinced of their former felicity by their experience: I say, how just
has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on, in an island
of mere desolation, should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared
it with the life which I then led, in which, had I continued, I had, in
all probability, been exceeding prosperous and rich.
I was, in some degree, settled in my measures for carrying on the
plantation, before my kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me
up at sea, went back; for the ship remained there, in providing his
lading, and preparing for his voyage, near three months; when, telling
him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me this
friendly and sincere advice: "Seignior Inglese," says he, for so he
always called me, "if you will give me letters, and a procuration here
in form to me, with orders to the person who has your money in London,
to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I shall direct, and
in such goods as are proper for this country, I will bring you the
produce of them, God willing, at my return; but, since human affairs are
all subject to changes and disasters, I would have you give orders for
but one hundred pounds sterling, which, you say, is half your stock, and
let the hazard be run for the first, so that if it come safe, you may
order the rest the same way; and, if it miscarry, you may have the other
half to have recourse to for your supply."
This was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not
but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly
prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I left my money, and a
procuration to the Portuguese captain, as he desired me.
I wrote the English captain's widow a full account of all my adventures;
my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Portuguese captain at
sea, the humanity of his behaviour, and what condition I was now in,
with all other necessary directions for my supply; and when this honest
captain came to Lisbon, he found means, by some of the English merchants
there, to send over, not the order only, but a full account of my story
to a merchant at London, who represented it effectually to her:
whereupon she not only delivered the money, but, out of her own pocket,
sent the Portuguese captain a very handsome present for his humanity and
charity to me.
The merchant in London, vesting this hundred pounds in English goods,
such as the captain had wrote for, sent them directly to him at Lisbon,
and he brought them all safe to me at the Brazils: among which, without
my direction, (for I was too young in my business to think of them,) he
had taken care to have all sorts of tools, iron work, and utensils,
necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me.
When this cargo arrived, I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised
with the joy of it; and my good steward, the captain, had laid out the
five pounds, which my friend had sent him as a present for himself, to
purchase and bring me over a servant, under bond for six years' service,
and would not accept of any consideration, except a little tobacco,
which I would have him accept, being of my own produce.
Neither was this all: but my goods being all English manufactures, such
as cloths, stuffs, baize, and things particularly valuable and desirable
in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great advantage; so
that I might say, I had more than four times the value of my first
cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbour, I mean in the
advancement of my plantation: for the first thing I did, I bought me a
Negro slave, and ail European servant also; I mean another besides that
which the captain brought me from Lisbon.
But as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our
adversity, so was it with me. I went on the next year with great success
in my plantation; I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco on my own
ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my neighbours;
and these fifty rolls, being each of above a hundred weight, were well
cured, and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon: and now,
increasing in business and in wealth, my head began to be full of
projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are, indeed, often
the ruin of the best heads in business. Had I continued in the station
I was now in, I had room for all the happy things to have yet befallen
me, for which my father so earnestly recommended a quiet, retired life,
and which he had so sensibly described the middle station of life to be
full of: but other things attended me, and I was still to be the wilful
agent of all my own miseries; and, particularly, to increase my fault,
and double the reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I
should have leisure to make, all these miscarriages were procured by my
apparent obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination, of wandering
about, and pursuing that inclination, in contradiction to the clearest
views of doing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those
prospects, and those measures of life, which nature and Providence
concurred to present me with, and to make my duty.
As I had once done thus in breaking away from my parents, so I could not
be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a
rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and
immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing
admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulph of
human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent
with life, and a state of health in the world.
To come, then, by just degrees, to the particulars of this part of my
story:--You may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in the
Brazils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my
plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had contracted an
acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as among
the merchants at St. Salvador, which was our port; and that, in my
discourses among them, I had frequently given them an account of my two
voyages to the coast of Guinea, the manner of trading with the Negroes
there, and how easy it was to purchase on the coast for trifles--such
as beads, toys, knives, scissars, hatchets, bits of glass, and the
like--not only gold dust, Guinea grains, elephants' teeth, &c. but
Negroes, for the service of the Brazils, in great numbers.
They listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads,
but especially to that part which related to the buying Negroes; which
was a trade, at that time, not only not far entered into, but, as far as
it was, had been carried on by the assientos, or permission of the kings
of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed from the public; so that few
Negroes were bought, and those excessive dear.
It happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my
acquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of them
came to me the next morning, and told me they had been musing very much
upon what I had discoursed with them of the last night, and they came to
make a secret proposal to me: and, after enjoining me to secrecy, they
told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea; that
they had all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing
so much as servants; that as it was a trade that could not be carried
on, because they could not publicly sell the Negroes when they came
home, so they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the Negroes on
shore privately, and divide them among their own plantations: and, in a
word, the question was, whether I would go their supercargo in the ship,
to manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea; and they offered me
that I should have an equal share of the Negroes, without providing any
part of the stock.
This was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any
one that had not a settlement and plantation of his own to look after,
which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and with a
good stock upon it. But for me, that was thus entered and established,
and had nothing to do but go on as I had begun, for three or four years
more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England; and
who, in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have
failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that
increasing too; for me to think of such a voyage, was the most
preposterous thing that ever man, in such circumstances, could be
guilty of.
But I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the
offer, than I could restrain my first rambling designs, when my father's
good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with
all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my
absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct, if I
miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings or
covenants to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing of my plantation
and effects, in case of my death; making the captain of the ship that
had saved my life, as before, my universal heir; but obliging him to
dispose of my effects as I had directed in my will; one half of the
produce being to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.
In short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects, and to
keep up my plantation: had I used half as much prudence to have looked
into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have
done and not to have done I had certainly never gone away from so
prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving
circumstance, and gone a voyage to sea, attended with all its common
hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular
misfortunes to myself.
But I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy,
rather than my reason: and accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and
the cargo furnished, and all things done as by agreement, by my partners
in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour again, the 1st of
September, 1659, being the same day eight years that I went from my
father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority,
and the fool to my own interest.
Our ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six guns,
and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself; we had on
board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our
trade with the Negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and odd
trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissars, hatchets,
and the like.
The same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward
upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast.
When they came about ten or twelve degrees of northern latitude, which,
it seems, was the manner of their course in those days, we had very good
weather, only excessive hot all the way upon our own coast, till we came
to the height of Cape St. Augustino; from whence, keeping farther off at
sea, we lost sight of land, and steered as if we were bound for the isle
Fernando de Noronha, holding our course N.E. by N. and leaving those
isles on the east. In this course we passed the line in about twelve
days' time, and were by our last observation, in 7 degrees 22 minutes
northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite
out of our knowledge: it began from the south-east, came about to the
north-west, and then settled in the north-east; from whence it blew in
such a terrible manner, that for twelve days together we could do
nothing but drive, and, scudding away before it, let it carry us whither
ever fate and the fury of the winds directed; and, during these twelve
days, I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up; nor,
indeed, did any in the ship expect to save their lives.
In this distress, we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our
men died of the calenture, and one man and a boy washed overboard. About
the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made an
observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about 11
degrees north latitude, but that he was 22 degrees of longitude
difference, west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was got
upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the river
Amazons, toward that of the river Oroonoque, commonly called the Great
River; and began to consult with me what course he should take, for the
ship was leaky and very much disabled, add he was going directly back to
the coast of Brazil.
I was positively against that; and looking over the charts of the
sea-coast of America with him, we concluded there was no inhabited
country for us to have recourse to, till we came within the circle of
the Caribbee islands, and therefore resolved to stand away for
Barbadoes; which by keeping off to sea, to avoid the in-draft of the bay
or gulf of Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about
fifteen days' sail; whereas we could not possibly make our voyage to the
coast of Africa without some assistance, both to our ship and ourselves.
With this design, we changed our course, and steered away N.W. by W. in
order to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief:
but our voyage was otherwise determined; for being in the latitude of 12
degrees 18 minutes, a second storm came upon us, which carried us away
with the same impetuosity westward, and drove us so out of the very way
of all human commerce, that had all our lives been saved, as to the sea,
we were rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever
returning to our own country.
In this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early
in the morning cried out, Land! and we had no sooner run out of the
cabin to look out, in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we were,
but the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment, her motion being so
stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner, that we expected we
should all have perished immediately; and we were immediately driven
into our close quarters, to shelter us from the very foam and spray
of the sea.